FROM EIR DAILY ALERT

Cancellation of the INF Treaty Could Threaten Europe

Oct. 25, 2018 (EIRNS)—Russian President Vladimir Putin at a joint news conference in Moscow with Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, after their talks on Oct. 24, said Europeans will be caught in the crosshairs of any potential conflict between the U.S. and Russia if they agree to host U.S. nuclear missiles, but that there is no real reason to put Europe in such a danger, RT reported. Putin was outlining a scenario in which the U.S. would move to withdraw from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty and decide to place nuclear missiles in Europe. The INF pact, which came into force in 1988, prohibits the development, production and deployment of land-based and cruise missiles with ranges of between 500 km and 5,500 km.

“If the U.S. does end up pulling out of the INF treaty, then the most important question is what will they do with the missiles that will reappear again?” he asked.

“If they are supplied to Europe, then of course we will have to respond in kind, and the European countries that agree to this—if things come to this—should understand that they will be subjecting their own territory to the threat of a possible retaliatory strike,”

he stated. “This is an obvious situation. We will go back to Pershings in Europe,” referring to the late 1970s, when the Brzezinski regime under Jimmy Carter sought to have NATO deploy intermediate-range Pershing II missiles in Western Europe.